Quote of the month for me

I read this blog entry last night and thought the following paragraph was very eloquently and powerful.

Smooth Pebbles: Climate change as a test of empiricism and secular democracy: "The spread of empiricism, in fact, has been essential not only to the rise not just of science but of pluralistic democracy. In order to accommodate many perspectives and beliefs, we agree to abide by the rule of law rather than religiion [sic]. Deciding policy and law based mainly on facts — on testable questions — frees us from quibbling endlessly about what beliefs are correct. We use rules based on a small handful of secular values, such as the integrity of the individual and the rights to property and privacy. And we agree to adjudicate those rules according to testable fact. Empiricism underlies not just science but all of pluralistic, rights-based society."

WPCDD

This is so true.

Big Spanish Castle

Wow, phenomenal optical illusion. Seems totally impossible.
Big Spanish Castle

Overheard in New York - honorable mention

There's this blog that has random quotes from people in NYC, heard by strangers and put up on the blog. They're usually pretty odd and funny (often vulgar), but the headlines really make the quotes.. A few weeks ago they opened up a contest where you got to submit the headline for the particular quote. I was one of the runners-up for this one:

Overheard in New York | Happy Birthday K-Fed

Evolution denial as the legacy of slavery?

I saw this article linking evolution denial and slavery, thought it was interesting: The Panda's Thumb: Evolution denial as the legacy of slavery

Power to the Baby

I've been pestered for more pictures of Simone. These are from my camera, so the quality isn't real good.

This first one was taken hastily, so you can't see her face. She's got her head turned to the side, but her eyes are on me, and the expression on her face is, "Why? Why's it gotta be like this?" Unfortunately, this is my only picture of this expression and she's not making it very often any longer. How fast they grow up....
Mary and Simone taking a nap.

Simone in a cute outfit:

Simone, looking like she's auditioning for the next Rocky movie:

Simone is tired, time for bed:
Here's a good example of Simone's "Power to the Baby" stance - with one arm raised high in salutation:

Mmmm... strawberries

I picked a quart of strawberries this morning from our patch in the back yard. I do like fresh berries on my granola (home made of course, Mary makes some grubbin granola).

It got me to thinking, what is my favorite fruit?

I realized, that's kind of a dumb question. Sure, you can have a favorite, but would you have an over/under-ripe one of your favorite, or a perfectly ripe strawberry/peach/nectarine? Probably the ripe fruit.

I think that a perfectly ripe fruit of whatever kind trumps all other fruits. These strawberries are good, really good, but, in a month when I can get local peaches, the peaches will taste better than any strawberry I'll be able to find.

Granted, there are some fruits I just don't care much for - or am indifferent to. But, chances are, I've not had one at its peak of ripeness.

Which lead me to another thought. I think we don't directly taste most of the fruit we eat. Instead, when we eat a fruit of a particular type, it reminds us of the select few we've had that were awesome. When I eat a nectarine now, it tastes good, real good, but I think I'm half-remembering the really good ones I had when they were in season.

The Tell Tale Fart

I just thought that phrase was clever (I came up with it myself).

It's the phrase I use when Simone farts while I'm changing her - it almost always precedes some poo. So, if I'm quick, I can cover her up and contain the mess. Unfortunately, not all poo follows that clear signal, sometimes she's in stealth mode.

People were right - when you have a baby, you just talk about bodily functions.

It's kind of like I'm hanging out with Sam and Ron.

EvolutionBlog : What is Infinity?

I took a math class at Cornell the second semester of my senior year. I had to choose between taking it, the 2nd class in very popular history series (the half I really wanted to take), and some other class I really wanted. The math class (408 - a senior level undergraduate course) was supposed to be a good way to wrap up a major at math.

Long story short, the course was a joke. Half the people there were education majors (with math/science emphasis) who could only argue emotionally, not mathematically. And so we spent 2 weeks "arguing" whether or not .9999... = 1 or not. Heck, during the final presentations one of the students was having mental orgasms during her presentation because her realizations (what she was presenting) was in fact the culmination of her 4 years at Cornell. The only problem was that these amazing revelations were basic geometrical facts that (I imagine) most of the math majors realized freshman year.

Anyway, this guy's blog entry brought all of that rushing back .EvolutionBlog : What is Infinity?
I do find infinity fascinating - I've got a book on it.

Spray-Right All Angle Sprayers and Plug-ins

This is a plug for an amazing new product that's out there - a spray bottle that works no matter what angle you hold the bottle. I'm gonna pick one up next week when I drive by the shop near work that carries them.

You see, I know the guy who invented this - he'd been talking about it for a long time and it's cool to see him getting it off the ground. Hopefully he'll get a big contract with CostCo or Home Depot or something, but until then, he's just going to local shops.

In the next week or so you'll be able to order them on-line.

Seriously, check out the web page:

Spray-Right All Angle Sprayers and Plug-ins

Living Rivers

I've had a running debate with a guy at work over whether or not dams are a realistic source of power for the country. I think they're not.

But it made me think of the Glen Canyon Dam. There used to be an ice cream shop in Moab that sent its profits to help get rid of the dam. I think it was the Living Rivers folks. They've got a web page full of good info. One particular article is a little alarming - that Lake Powell is going to go dry in 2007. I think that's a bit early (just next year? - it's currently at 40-50% of capacity), but still, the trend is not good. Living Rivers Grand Canyon Campaign

Considering how beautiful Arches/Moab/Zion/Brice Canyon are, you know that there are many awesome canyons that are currently inundated. It'd be neat to see them again.

dope kid

That was Sam's response. I think she looks like she's all dressed up in desert garb. Simone - princess of Arabia.

Ann Coulter is just nuts

Not that I figured I'd ever be a fan of Ann Coulter - I read one of her books on the media (my Republican friend welshed on the deal - he was going to read Al Franken) and it was completely skewed - but it wasn't outrageous. However, her newest book seems to be pretty far out there. It appears that Ann thinks the problem with evolution is all them women and biologists.

best mojito recipie - Google Search

Turns out if you don't know how to spell recipe (I often spell it recipie), and you search for

best mojito recipie - Google Search

My site comes up in the top 3 (it just came up as #1 for me). boo-yeah!

Book Review: Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D Ehrman

I read the book Misquoting Jesus by Bart D Ehrman right after Simone was born (the timing was not on purpose - that's just when the library had a copy available). I'd been looking for a book like this for quite some time and was excited to get my hands on it.

It's basically a book that relates how Bart Ehrman undergoes a transformation from a born again Christian to whatever he is right now (agnostic I believe, but he didn't say in his book), and why. The "why" is the interesting part. (Note: Bart Ehrman is a big-wig at Princeton, so he's not just some hack dissing the bible.) He lays out a quick history of the scriptures and how they arrived from their original form to what we have today - copies of copies of copies of copies of copies (of copies). He talks about how the scripture has changed over time, and methods scholars use to try to determine which versions of the old copies of scripture are closer to the "original" (if that even has any meaning). Pretty good stuff.

Actually, to get a quick overview of the book, listen to the Fresh Air interview with him. It's actually a decent summary of the book, you don't even have to read it.

In the book he goes over several key passages in the bible ("this is my body, broken for you...", Jesus and the leper, the story of the two women finding Jesus' body missing after his resurrection, Jesus dying by God's grace or apart from Him, the story of casting stones at the adulteress, and mothers), and he shows you why he thinks a particular version is more original. He does, however, say that many scholars disagree on various passages, and that you should not necessarily take his word - but to read as much as you want/can and make up your own mind. So I give him credit for that.

I did look for some reviews to see what others thought of his book. I found this long review (here's a shorter version) of the book. The long version goes into detail refuting a couple of Ehrman's points, and simply dismissing or minimizing Ehrman's other points. And then at the end he slams another work that Ehrman contributed to (the fourth edition of MetzgerÂ’s Text of the New Testament) for no apparent reason. Oh, even better, at the end of both reviews, the critic offers readers of the review to check out a soon to be published book that has a better (supposedly more accurate) view of the scripture. Of course that is a plug for a book the reviewer has helped write (he's one of the authors).

I may or may not read this critic's book. While it might have some good information and contrasting opinions, I really didn't care for the tone of his review. He tries to paint it as though writing the review was difficult, "It gives me no joy to put forth this review." But there were a few cheap shots in there.

But maybe I didn't get the message of Ehrman's book. What I took from it is that the following truth changed Ehrman's life: the bible has changed over time, sometimes by mistake, sometimes by intentional changes (motivated by theology, societal pressures, or to clear up/clean up the wording). That's it. The book was well written, very easy to read, and chocked full of interesting and thought provoking ideas.

And to think, I liked the book and I'm not even a believer.

This is reassuring

We let North Korea develop missiles (not that I think they'd be stupid enough to fire them at the U.S. itself), and we build a system to intercept the missiles that just doesn't work: Fledgling US missile shield largely unproven.

It's been years, and they've only had 5/8 success rate? That doesn't count the number of times they had to scrub the tests. And they don't point out how easy the tests probably were set up to be.

Just a waste of money. Talk is a hell of a lot cheaper, and would probably work better.

Michael Pollan versus Whole Foods

Michael Pollan wrote a book I'm intending on reading, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which traces aspects of four different meals (ranging from a hamburger meal at a fast food restaurant to a meal he hunted/gathered himself) that cover the span of available options to us.

Oh, and you can listen to an interview with him on Fresh Air here: Dinner: An Author Considers the Source.

Anyway, sounds like a neat book. In it he gives Whole Foods a hard time, in part because they talk a lot about how local they are, when in fact, very few local farmers provide food for Whole Foods - most of their stuff is gotten from two, large organic growers. Evidentially, the president of Whole Foods wrote an open letter to Michael Pollan, defending Whole Foods' practices.

Here's Mr. Pollan's response, I found it very enlightening: Michael Pollan's response.

Another first

Today I exercised - I went on a jog. Which is about the first exercise I've had since she was born.

I've been using Simone as an excuse not to exercise, but it's not a good excuse considering my diet lately. Anyway, it hurt, but I'm sure it'll hurt worse tomorrow.

Funky Keyboard

I've seen this keyboard in the past, but just came across a good review of it: ATPM 7.05 - Review: Datahand Professional II.
I'd like to try the keyboard out, but $1000 is a lot of cash (though they're currently selling it at 50% off, but $500 is a lot of cash).

BBC has a live map of popular stories

Slick. You can click on a portion of the world (think continents) and see which headlines are the most popular now. It gives you an easy way to see what is popular in different parts of the world. Most notably, soccer was high on every continent other than ours. BBC NEWS | Most Popular Now | Live World Map

Neat free running video

There's a pretty good free running video on Google here. I'd seen some other videos, but this is one of the better (ignoring the dorky 30 seconds or so about a minute into it where there is no action, just camera movement).

Watching this definitely reminds me of some of Jackie Chan's moves in his movies, and my immediate conclusion was that big-budget movies are probably going to start using more and more free running in their chase scenes.

Of course a little bit of research led to finding parkour - the name for the original physical discipline from which free running has grown. Parkour is the minimalist approach to getting through obstacles as efficiently as possible, whereas free running is more artistic (free-form) that doesn't necessarily care about efficiency.

And, I also found out some of it is going to be used in the new James Bond film, Casino Royale. cool.

DMCA article

This is a good article on what affect the DMCA has had on the electronics industry. I especially like the last paragraph:

Hollywood is good at telling stories. The one it has been screening in Washington—that music and movies will perish if the regulators don't kill the dangerous gizmos first—is powerful drama but has about as much basis in reality as Lord of the Rings. Killing off gizmos and subjecting technological development to the whims of federal regulators will ultimately hurt not just consumers but also tomorrow's creative industries—both technology and entertainment.

The article in full: IEEE Spectrum: Death by DMCA by Fred von Lohmann and Wendy Seltzer.

6 down, 1 to go

We just finished season 6 of the West Wing (needless to say we're hooked). Now we have to wait until September 11th to get a look at it.

Mmmm.... strawberries

I've got to say, strawberries from our own garden trump any strawberries we'll ever find in the store. They are light years ahead of the huge, colorful, tasteless berries from California, and tons better than the organic ones we get at the co-op.

I picked a pint of them tonight, and put them over some Julie's organic vanilla ice cream. It was nirvana.

So True

A wonderful rant written by Jon Carroll: check it.

Annoying Forest Ads

There have been ads on TV for a while talking about how wonderful the Oregon laws are for protecting forests. I find them condescending because it very obviously is showing a one-sided view of the state of things (pro-industry).

Well, a few seconds on the web page, you can clearly see that the board of directors is only staffed by people in the logging (forest) industry.

This is just annoying as all get out. Our tax money is going to a state-sponsored organization that is just a mouthpiece for the industry.

But this should not be a surprise when the same government decides that a paper that shows industry practices damage the environment is unacceptable because it is "political." You see, because papers that show the industry is doing good isn't political, but bad things are political.

Throat Surgery

So I had my throat surgery today. The goal was to relieve the narrowing in my esophagus right above the sphincter to the stomach. It's a real quick operation - they don't even sedate you very much, they give you a narcotic that makes you forget the procedure. So, I don't remember anything about the operation.

The surgeon did some looking around while she was in my GI tract. She found no hieatal hernia, but did find a new-looking ulcer in my small intestine, and said she was worried about my esophagus (it was inflamed or prone to bleeding or something). Long story short, she was full of bad news and didn't have any real answers as to why things might be they way they are.

But it's not all doom and gloom. Mary and I both agreed that the surgeon was very happy to diagnose problems, but offered no information as to how things got this way, how bad any of it was, or what could be done to prevent any of this from happening again.

What she did do is double my super-antacid prescription, and gave me some stuff to help heal the ulcer. Ironically, the ulcer is possibly new enough that might have been caused by the antacid medicine I used to get ready for this surgery. The surgeon did in fact take a little biopsy of the ulcer to see if the ulcer was caused by bacteria. And if it's the case, I'll get some super duper antibiotic to treat it.

Anyway, my hiccupping should go away, and I'll probably go see some other doctors for a second opinion, probably a naturopath to see what I can do about my GI inflammation. Stupid M.D.s never look at the big picture.

Heh, the surgeon even asked me (mere minutes before my surgery) if I wanted to remove my gall bladder. I said, "no" and she warned me that it was a ticking time bomb. Gotta love that bedside manner.

So now I just finish my 24 hours of a liquid only diet (which followed the 18 hours of fasting prior to the surgery).

What I Learned Today (11th day of Simone)

Simone likes pooping in clean diapers.

Oh, and most of the "small" cloth diaper wraps are woefully large, which leads to bad fits (i.e. leaks).

Mystery Solved

Ever wonder why aluminum foil is glossy on one side and not on the other?
Check out the article: Tin, Aluminum, Chromium

Slick (gapminder)

Check out this cool visualization: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/

ps. Happy 300'th entry to me.

Things I Learned Today

Well, I probably learned them over the last week, but at the 1 week anniversary of my daughter's birth I realized:

• I've got a kid. I knew that before, but I ran an errand today and saw some little kids hanging outside of the post office (presumably waiting for their parents to finish up inside) and I realized, "I've got one of those." And just this evening I realized, she's gonna be a teenager soon.
• Simone knows Tai Chi. You should see it. She's got all the hand and foot movements mastered - she just needs to stand up and do the same thing. One thing that's gonna put her at the top of her class is her facial expressions - way beyond what I've seen people do in the park.
• Infant clothes are horribly sized. She's small (6 pounds 10 ounces now), and the 0-3 month outfits just hang on her like the Talking Heads big suit, and the premie clothes are just too short. Luckily Grandma (nanna?) embroidered some little body suits that fit just right, so she's wearing those and some socks.
• Change diapers often. This is just a good investment, because when I'm old and in diapers, I want her to make sure my diapers are changed often.
  

A Slew of Visitors (even more)

Well, these aren't necessarily visitor pictures, just pictures of Simone while people were over.

This is one of the first pictures of Simone, I call it her nostril shot.

In this photo, Simone is posing as some movie star from the 40's, I'll let you guess who.
She's just cute as a button in the next two.

Here she is in Grandma's lap (Mom isn't sure what she wants to be called yet, so I'm using Grandma).

She's got the typical cute baby feet.
Several people have said that she looks like me. I'm hoping she doesn't get my unibrow.

Simone Rose in front of a pink rose plant.
Simone's first outfit.

Lastly, when she gets tired of all the photos, she lets us know.

A Slew of Visitors (cont)

More pictures from the past few days.

First is Sam, talking to his new niece.

And Simone's summit pose (check out those guns)
Paula came down to meet her niece in between finishing up the state track meet and heading back to school. Such dedication for Simone - but she's worth it.

And Gin and Bob raced over the day they got back from their wine tour of Italy.


I even got into a few pictures. See, there's proof that I change diapers.
Note the crooked horizon - something my Dad always gives Sam a hard time about. Well, this one was taken by dad.
Here I am admiring our beautiful daughter.

A Slew of Visitors

Wow, a bunch of people came by to check out our newborn Simone.

But first, a quick note about her name. You don't pronounce it like I have been doing (Sah-mOn) but instead say (si-mOn) - that's si as in sit, and mon as in moan. You see, I've just always pronounced it the other way. Of course people on the phone think it's spelled "Samone" when I pronounce her name incorrectly. Jeesh. Of course I mispronounced my friend Megan's name for a year and a half. It is Megan as in 'egg'. But of course on the east coast they pronounce 'egg' differently than we do here. sigh...

Anyway, lots of people came by, and we took pictures. Lots of pictures.

First we have two of my dad and Simone, both turned out very nice. For some reason, all the photos of my dad came out in focus, but everyone else had some blurry pictures.

This next one is of our midwife, Lisa.


I took a bunch of photos of my mom from this angle - I'm not sure why. Simone looks good in all of them, but mom's head is a bit too close -so it appears to dwarf the rest of her body. Sorry mom.

The next three are of my darling wife and Simone. We took Simone outside for a little tan and to enjoy the nice weather.

Cuteness personified

Five days and seven hours old, getting cuter by the minute. I don't see how this can continue much longer - there just isn't enough cuteness in the world. Perhaps it's more of a logarithmic curve, and not the exponential curve it appears to be. (click on the links if you don't understand math)

A Day of Many Firsts

Like most new parents (as they/we should), it's all about the baby for the first few days/months/years. I had Simone's first puke, and I changed my first diaper ever (not counting the half-job I did on my nephew-in-law a few years back). And, of course tonight will be my first night sleeping with a baby (yes, we're co-sleeping, I think it's dumb not to).

What I didn't realize is that after the birth, you get a 24-hour "cry free" buffer where the baby is pretty much just sleeping. Simone did cry a couple of times for a minute or two, but she was generally happy as a clam to just hang out and sleep.

Mary and I are very blessed to have had a safe birth to a healthy baby (sadly, this is not the case for more people in the U.S. than in any other developed country).

At some point I'll discuss what it was like to have a home-birth, but I'm not done processing it myself yet.

Simone Rose Jackson

Born this morning, 5am. 20 inches long, 6 pounds 7 ounces, and as beautiful as can be.

Both Mary and Simone are doing very well, though they're both a bit tired after the long journey to get here.

They Let Us Win

So, I had yet another game tonight. We barely had five people, which was lucky for the other team. Why? Because we stomped them 82 to 44. I had a ton of rebounds, a number of blocked shots, and an assist or two.

My guess is that when the dude who organized the basketball schedule saw our team name, he lined up the easiest schedule possible. We would have scored more, but (again) two of our point guards have no clue how to pass to anyone other than themselves, and were pretty much black holes (you give them the ball, they're shooting). Oh, and the other tall guy on my team (well, 3 of the 4 other guys playing) wouldn't shoot the ball when they got a rebound underneath the basket. It was sad. Not as sad as my 3/14 from the field (3 consecutive shots missed in about 6 seconds).

Of course, the saddest thing of all was we were playing a girls high school team. They were maybe Juniors, though they could have been younger. If you took their three point guards and put them on the other side of a teeter-totter from me, I'd still tip the scale in my favor. Luckily, the were decent shots, and we fell for most of their pump fakes. But when only two of their players stood taller than our shortest player, you knew it was going to be trouble.

So Depressing

Today INTC closed at $17.95. Now, for those of you keeping score, that's the Intel stock ticker.

First, let me say that I like my job (though recent events really make me doubt the management of my department, but that's another blog entry), and they pay me well. So I'm not complaining about compensation.

However, one of the "perks" of a supposed high tech company is the stock, or even the stock options. Take a look at this chart comparing AMD, Intel, and the S&P 500 over the last two years. It's depressing.

Now, back to the options. When I joined Intel, stock was soaring, and everyone talked about "the golden handcuffs", and that was a part of the attraction of working at Intel. I'm saddened to say that only one set of my options are in the black, and if the stock drops to a measly $17.42, then I'll have no options worth anything. Hell, if I'd actually purchased stock for the same prices, I'd be out a third of my money.

Anyway, it's just a bit depressing to think about all that lost potential. It wasn't so bad when it was just me, but then I got married and had to think about a wife. And now, I've got a kid that's almost here...

Wasps Nests

I mowed the lawn today. Not my favorite job, but it's a heck of a lot easier than weed-whacking a lawn.

Anyway, it finished up pretty quickly because we have more flower beds than we used to, and there's still a huge pile of dirt in the south-west corner of the yard. Luckily the weeds are holding down the dirt, otherwise it might look bad.

Where was I.... oh, it went quickly, so I figured I should do some more yard work. An hour or two every evening, and we'll be caught up in no-time.

I recalled seeing a couple of wasp nests under the eaves of the house, and being the procrastinator I am, figured I'd better get to them soon, or Mary will be pissed when a swarm of them comes down and flies away with the baby. That meant tonight.

So, how does one deal with wasp nests? You can get some noxious chemical spray and spray them, but Mary is very against that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not all chemical happy, I'd rather not spray stuff everywhere if there's another alternative (that doesn't take forever). But if your partner feels strongly about something, and you don't, you're best to go with the flow. So no chemical for me. Oh, and another reason not to do use the spray: I didn't have any and am far to lazy to hop in a car and go get some.

The question was, how do I get the wasp nest I saw in the eaves 20' up in the air? See, that's why the spray was attractive - because it shot out of the can up to 20'. Problem solved.

Only no spray.

Well, you can knock the wasps' nest off the eaves. So find a stick. Luckily, I've got some 8' poles that we use for the deer fence around the garden.

So I get one and start looking for nests. Guess how many we have?

Go on, guess!

Lame - you could at least have played along. We had at least 2 dozen. Seriously. Now, 6-8 of them were just starts, no bigger than a wasp really. And those were almost all in one spot, so they went quickly. The next dozen were a little larger, the size of a ping-pong ball. The tiny ones were no big deal, and the lime-sized ones didn't bother me too much, but they actually made noise when falling down the side of the house. The noise was kind of like tissue paper bouncing down stairs.

Then I saw the big one, it's not as large as the one I knocked off two years ago (that was the size of a good-sized pancake with a few pints of strawberries on top). No, not that big, but it was the size of my fist. And when I attacked the pancake one, it was winter and I told myself that they were all hibernating or something. This is spring, and they're all feeding off our flower beds.

Eh? Feeding off the flower beds? Permit me a digression. When you're dealing with wasps, you quickly realize there are a bunch of different kinds. I figured that I was battling the flesh-eating death wasp from Peru, but it turns out it's likely just a black and yellow mud dauber wasp. Turns out, love eating spiders, and we have about a hundred spider egg pouches along the eaves. And every resource I found about them quickly pointed out that they are docile wasps, very rarely stinging people (or any animals). So, I wasn't dealing with nests of hoards of suicidal attack insects, but nests of single, pansy, wasps that build their hives out of mud. Back to the story.

But I didn't know that, I was sure they were going to come after me like some cartoon, only I had no lake to jump in.

So I poke at the large nest a couple of times, and it falls onto our porch - where I leave it for Mary to admire when she gets home. That and because I'm afraid that the baby wasps are waiting for me to get close, at which time they jump out and eat me. That nest had 2 layers of honeycomb, which I thought was way cool.

This only left the nests at the peak in the back yard. I wasn't tall enough. Even with my arms extended, the 8' pole, and my huge vertical leap (12" at least), I was still several feet short of getting to the nests way up high. And these were the size of small lemons.

Of course at my Portland house, I had a kick-ass ladder. I got the one that would reach any of the gutters, so it extended to 22'. Not only that, but it was rated to hold more than my weight, it was spec'ed to hold 300 pounds. I left it in Portland at my dad's place.

So I'm left with only a 6' ladder, which means that I can just barely reach the nests. The first one is low enough that I don't have to stand directly under it. I poke a couple of times, it comes down quickly. I look down and two wasps crawl out of it and sit there a little dazed. Dunno, perhaps they were interrupted in the middle of hanky-panky. That freaked me out a little, because I was going to have to get under the highest two and basically let them fall straight at me.

I knock off another "low" one and psych myself up for the last two. I poke at the smaller (ping-pong ball sized), see it fall, and not so quickly lumber down the ladder and run away. I'm pretty sure the nest hit the ground before I was even at the last rung of the ladder, but I still ran. Then the momma of them, an orange-sized nest directly above my head.

You would think I was building to a big climax or something,
but you'd be wrong.

The last one came down like the rest, but I didn't watch. I just grabbed the ladder and waddled off like the scaredy-cat I am.

Wind Power

A year and a half ago I wrote about our energy usage at home. While we don't go crazy about eliminating fossil fuels (I still drive to work, and we use natural gas), we do what we can. Anyway, I'll plug Pacific Power's Blue Sky program again - it really doesn't cost you but a few dollars more a month to get all your electricity from totally renewable resources.

But the motivation for this entry is this wonderful article at Daily Kos about wind power, read it, learn something: Daily Kos: Alternative Energies: Wind power

Polls

Really, I'd thought of this idea before he wrote about it, but Billmon uses nice big words and all: Whiskey Bar: Vox Pollsteri.

Anyway, I've found it ridiculous that the "polls show X" or "polls show Y" when talking about our rights. For a long time black folks weren't allowed to vote/go to school/marry non-blacks/drink water from fountains/etc. etc. etc. And the polls agreed with those things. Same goes for women, or any other group.

Polls do give an feel of the current population's stand on an issue, but they're often phrased in a way such that the pollster gets to support their issue - so you have to closely look at the questions. I'm fairly confident that if polled, 99% of the U.S. thinks abortions are bad - nobody wants to have one. Also, polls rely on the premise that folks are well informed, however it's pretty apparent that this administration doesn't give out any information (unless it's to further their purpose), the Congress isn't fighting to get info released, and the press is just a sack of corporate lap dogs.

What's a little wiretapping, I know they're not listening to me....

I could have had two brains....

So I was walking outside the buildings at work with some friends, and we passed the bike racks. I noticed a bright red bike and recognized it as the Specialized Epic. I'm in love with my bike, it's a lot of fun to ride, it's pretty, and it's got the geek factor (the brain).

Anyway, I spent a pretty penny on the bike, it's not real cheap. I'm not bragging, I'm setting up the next point.

The guy locked his bike up with a Kryptonite lock - the preferred lock for most cyclists. He put the lock through bike rack (a good start), and securely around the seat post.

Let me repeat - it was around the seat post.

Now, perhaps you're unfamiliar with what a bike looks like. Take a look at the Park Tool bike map and notice how the seatpost and saddle just poke out of the rest of the frame. I'm pretty sure you could have pulled the seat through the Kryptonite lock without unlocking it. But, if you didn't want to go to that effort, you just had to undo the quick release on the seat post.

Eh? This dude "locks" an expensive bike up in about the least secure way possible, I almost stole it out of principal (couldn't hurt to have a spare).

I was advised to take it out of the lock and just lean it up. I also thought of just writing a nasty letter and leaving it on the bike. Or perhaps taking my own lock and locking it up.

Just pisses me off though...

Heaven or Hell?

Somebody pointed out this humorous tribute to their cat.
I'd like to think our cats are some place like this:

Our Cat Enters Heaven - by Margaret Atwood

A Short History

I've been listening to an audio book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, while working in the yard today. It is truly a fascinating book. A summary of the book would be, "a history of science, in laymans terms, with all the peculiarities of those involved." The beginning starts with a wonderful description of how impossibly big the solar system is, let alone the universe. And he makes a good point that, given how large space is, it seems a little odd that intelligent life would come all this way to make crop circles.

The book is read by some English chap with an accent that just makes you want to listen more. Though it was rather confusing to hear that accent talk about growing up in the U.S.

Math meets poetry

Heh, fun poems to be found here. It's a blend of haiku and Fibbonacci.

1/1/2/3/5/8

weeds
and
more weeds
pull them up
i gotta start now
or nothing will ever get done

Heh, it's my first Fib.

Chernobyl

It's been 20 years since the accident. Here are two very powerful tributes to Chernobyl, a series of photos by Robert Knoth, and a photo essay narrated by the photographer, Paul Fusco.

The Brick Testament

Just found this interpretation of the Bible called The Brick Testament. Some people have too much time on their hands.

How many Jelly Bellies...

So a guy at work had a contest - who could guess how many Jelly Belly beans were in a given container. Long story short, I won. I guessed there were 1619 beans in the jar, and there were 1620. Rock on!

Too bad I decided I'd go on a diet.

Sweet!

I'd heard about stevia a while back, and have wanted to try it. It's a super sweet leaf (often used as an extract, or you can use the leaves). Mary picked up a little jar of it for me last week and I've been drinking it in my tea.

You see, my new doctor (no, not Mary) told me that I'm fat (not those words, but...). While I can normally tolerate that from my friends (it's a mantra in Moab - "You know why you can't do X? Because you're fat!" - and it's true), or my family might tell me. But when a near complete stranger approaches you soberly (wearing a white lab coat or not) and tells you that you should think about changing your diet, it kinda sticks.

Anyway, I'm doing a lot more than just using stevia in my tea, and I'm down 6 pounds this week.

But that's not the point. You should check stevia out. It's pretty wild. It's 250-300 times as sweet as sucrose (regular sugar) - which means that 1/4 teaspoon is as much as 1.25 cups of sugar. It's very sweet and has a nice aftertaste. It does have a slight bitter pre-taste (as I call it) that takes a little getting used to, but that's not bad - certainly no worse than Nutrasweet or any of the other artificial sweeteners I tasted way back when.

I'm gonna go have some tea right now.

Funny, or not, you decide

MoJo has a little snippet contrasting what the media finds funny and what it doesn't.

At issue is Stephen Colbert's recent performance at the White House Correspondent's dinner.

I watched the performance, and it is funny. Unfortunately, it's funny because it is so true - which is why it is also sad.

Hypocrisy

I know other people have blogged about this, and it's probably been shown on a few TV stations. But the folks supporting the speaker of the house will still vote for him. Anyway, if you didn't know it, he drove away from an energy conservation meeting in a hybrid car, but got out of the car a few blocks away and got back into his huge SUV for the few remaining blocks going back to his office. Just pisses me off.

John Carroll writes about it much more eloquently than do I.

Religious Tolerance

Douglas Rushkoff writes an thoughtful piece on religious tolerance. I immediately connect with the article when reading the third paragraph:

Maybe I'm just getting old, but I no longer see the real value in being tolerant of other people's beliefs. Sure, when beliefs are relegated to the realm of pure entertainment, they pose no real danger. So, a kid believes U2 is really a supergroup on par with The Beatles or The Who. That's *his* problem, and it doesn't really do a lot of harm to anyone except those of us who still stop by MTV occasionally to see what might be playing.

I like the grumpy old man attitude.

The rest of the article is less grumpy old man and more pissed at the religious fanatics. He makes a number of very interesting points - one of the main ones being that people have to stop living in the past and just aren't using their brains.

He ends with:

The more we can make [the Bible's] mythology relevant to our present, the more easily we'll bring those who believe in it out of the past.

I might just have to go read his new comic.

Illegal Aliens

oooh, scary. There are "illegal aliens" in our country. Not only are they different (because they're alien), but they are breaking the law.

Everyone breaks the law. There are so many laws out there that it's probably impossible to go more than a week (if even a day) without breaking at least one law. So using the justification that "they're breaking the law" to need to go and round them up is just dumb. It turns out, illegal aliens are only 1/4 as likely to do real crime as regular Americans. So what's the big deal?

Oh, and I'm all for them protesting (I just learned that our cafeteria didn't use real plates on Monday - likely because their dish washers were out), but the idea that a day of not buying things (even if nobody did it) would have a real dent in our economy is silly. People would have just have bought more the day before or after.

What they should do is not work for a month. Now that would cause real damage.

Esophageal narrowing

That was quick. The doctor's office called today, I'm getting referred on to a gastrointerologist (sp?). I've got a narrowing of my esophagus. I could have told them that (it's what I figured).

Now that I've had time to think about all of this, I remember back in high school getting a little bit of food poisoning. I got real sick, but had a real tough time throwing up - it felt like something was squeezing shut and not letting the food out. I've not been able to throw up effectively ever since. And I remember as a kid just puking - like one of those horror movies - a nice steady stream. Everything changed in high school. I wonder what did it.

I'll never look at milkshakes the same again

Today I had the joy of drinking a barium milkshake. For some 6 or 7 years now, I've occasionally had difficulty swallowing. Food would get stuck in my esophagus just above my stomach. I'd get some vigorous hiccups, spit up the food, and generally be uncomfortable for 5-50 minutes until my esophagus relaxed to let the food pass through.

I finally went in to see a M.D. about it, which meant I got to get an xray of my stomach. Stomachs don't show up very well, thus the barium.

Mmmmm.... barium. All in all, it didn't taste too bad. But it was like drinking a palatable chalk shake. Only the shake was super heavy. But first I had to quickly chug a slug of water and special salts, which immediately turned into a bunch of gas in my belly. So, not only did I get to drink a thick shake, my belly was already full of gas - and I wasn't allowed to burp.

The only thing I know so far is that the barium pill (yup, a shake and a pill) hung out in my esophagus, not wanting to drop into the stomach - so I had to drink yet more barium to wash it down. Hopefully I'll know more in a few days.

Still asking, "Please let us win"

This week was my third basketball game for the team with the bad guards. We're 2 and 3 now I think. This past game could have gone really wrong (the score was 22 to 6 at one point), but a new guy (who showed up for game #2) was there mid-way through the first half. It's amazing how much it helps to have a person who can actually pass and can see more than one person to pass to.

In the first 5 minutes, our two bad guards had 4 or 5 passes picked off and the guy from Russia had 3 shots blocked before they even left his hand. It was embarrassing.

I shot horribly (2 or 3 out of 8 from the field). But I did have a couple of great blocks. We snuck by with a loss of less than 15 points, which I felt good about.

With the new guard, the team is bearable. Though the guys still need to learn how to play a zone.

Wow, diaper facts

I finally got to reading the article I told y'all to read. These facts really stood out:

Some of the facts: 18 billion disposable diapers are thrown in landfills each year, taking as many as 500 years to decompose. Disposable diapers make up the third largest source of solid waste in landfills, after newspapers and food and beverage containers--a significant fact, considering they are a single product, used by a limited portion of the population.1 It takes upwards of 82,000 tons of plastic and 1.3 million tons of wood pulp, or a quarter-million trees, to manufacture the disposable diapers that cover the bottoms of 90 percent of the babies born in the US.

( (2.) Rhode Island Solid Waste Management Corporation.)

Wow. Really, check out the article.

Diapers

Yup, you'd better get used to it. We're gonna have a kid, and I'm sure that my posts will have a lot more content revolving around the rug-rat-to-be than I've posted about the cats.

Today's post is about diapers. We've decided to use cloth. Mary dove in first with the research, and I started reading after she wowed me with some stats. Cloth really shouldn't be a big deal, and it's good for the environment and could even save us money.

Here were two good articles giving some rationale for choosing cloth. First, from Mothering magazine, and the second set from Punkin Butt on the environmental issues and cost. Punkin Butt has a bunch of interesting articles to begin your education.

Don't be surprised if I call you up all excited about baby's first poo!

Another Year, Another Moab

I think this was my 8th trip to Moab. The big surprise of the trip was that, finally, my freehub finally made me money. Sam and Ron both bet me that I'd break my freehub on the trip. But it held true. Glory be to Kris King.

We did some climbing in Moab and just north of Moab. Sam has pictures of the climbs and biking. I took a few pics with my camera phone, but none really turned out. The light was beautiful that night - if only some of the lazy butts had come riding with me, we could have had some awesome pictures.

In the end I rode the slickrock trail on 3 different days. The ride truly is spectacular. Along the way I made some quick friends - two women who talked trash, a couple of dudes who really appreciated the tip to ride Amasa Back, and a 5 year old girl who seemed content to just take in the view after being pushed up the hill by her dad.

It's True

Mary and I are having a baby. Yup, you heard it here ... much later than you heard it in person.

For whatever reason, I've not blogged about having a baby yet. At first it was just a part of the cautious approach, then I probably didn't blog about it so as not to jinx anything, and then it became habit.

Well, I'm breaking the cycle and announcing to the world, Mary and I are having a baby in the beginning of June. We don't yet know the sex, we're planning on having it at home, and we haven't yet decided on names (it's likely to not be named MacDonald Hall Jackson IV, but that hasn't been ruled out).

But, since you already knew all that stuff, I had intended on writing about a cool book I found.

Baby-Gami - a book on how to wrap/swaddle your baby and how to use slings. It's cute and uses lots of puns, but there are a couple of useful methods of wrapping the baby - one I hadn't thought of was using a brown paper bag (as the book says, when the baby has a blowout and you're out of clothes, you've gotta do something).

I'm sure we'll try a couple of different methods of carrying the baby. Mary has something she got from a friend/family member, my mom and dad have a carrier they used for Sam and me that is from Japan, and I'm sure we'll try a sling or two from the book.

Hmmmm.. I could try swaddling the cats for practice.

Please Let Us Win

That's the name of my new basketball team. Kinda sad, and I should have taken it as a sign.

Tonight we played our first game of the season. It's going to be a long season.

The guys are nice, though I'm probably old enough to be their father. Their youth does lead to a couple of benefits: quickness, energy, and fitness. However, the lack of experience playing will make it tough to win a game.

The first half started off horribly. Luckily, the other team we played was just as bad. Really, this was probably one of the worst organized games of basketball I've ever had the fortune of playing. Our two point guards (one was the guy who invited me on the team) only had eyes for each other - often choosing to make a long, risky, bad pass to the other one instead of a simple pass to the person open right next to them. Oh, and instead of crisp passes, they preferred high lobs (one of the few passes to me was a good 15 feet in the air). They also felt that a pass to them was an indication to shoot. And shoot they did.

(Un)fortunately, their defensive skills balanced out their offensive play. The guys they were guarding regularly drove past them for open shots. Or, their men just appeared in the open with the defensive player nowhere in sight. The only saving grace was that the other team was as one dimensional as we were. For instance, the guy I had the fortune of guarding never shot and rarely got the ball (even though I barely guarded him).

Oh, and in the first half we played zone. Only one guy had no idea what a zone was and repeatedly followed a random offensive player around. I kept telling him, "you stay in this area and guard whoever is there," but he just didn't get it. The other guys similarly played more of a man-like defense, leaving the key wide open. That left a lot of the defense to me - and I had 3 or 4 'stuff-it-in-your-face" blocks that half.

In the second half I didn't get very winded as I realized I didn't need to run back on offense because by the time I got to half court, the guard I passed it to would have already shot. I may be old, out of shape, and slow, but I'm not that slow. As a result, I wasn't in position for rebounds. My stats were 7 boards, 8 points (1 missed free throw), 3 blocks, and 1 assist.

Hopefully the schedule will be kind to us and we'll play some other bad teams. But I have a feeling that it's going to be a long season.

Happy Birthday to me

So, for my birthday, Mary got me hammered dulcimer lessons. A new song comes each month on it's own CD, it's a full lesson with sheet music and a track with the guitar/fiddle playing backup. And you get to choose which song you want, there 33 to chose from. Pretty cool.

Ooh, and she also got me a pair of hammers with leather on the business end. This causes the music to be a lot softer - somewhat piano-like (its hammers are also padded).

And best of all, she helped me learn how to play "Happy Birthday" on the dulcimer. I'm tone deaf enough that I couldn't figure out why things sounded so off when I was playing the wrong notes. Hopefully that'll get better with age.... more age.

NOVA | The Great Robot Race

Last night I watched NOVA | The Great Robot Race | PBS on TV. I'd heard about the challenge two years ago when none of the robots did very well.

You see, DARPA decided to host a challenge to anyone who could build a robot that could complete a 130 mile trek through the Mojave desert. And last year, the "best" team made it 7 miles.

The show (the entire hour is available on-line - PBS rocks) follows a number of the teams, discussing their different approaches, and then covers the race itself.

CMU has two robots, and Stanford has one - they were the main focus of the show. While I like CMU a lot, I think the Standford team's accomplishment was much more impressive. Of course, they won the competition, but it's not that they won, it's how they did it.

Stanford's robot, Stanley, is pretty much just a VW fitted with robotic controls and some off the shelf electronic components. On the other end of the spectrum, the CMU vehicles are Humvees with a lot of custom-made electronics. Stanford's robot was the only one to complete the qualification round without touching any of the obstacles (pretty impressive). And, when given the race course (a set of GPS coordinates), the Stanford team just uploaded those and let the robot go. The CMU team on the other hand, had a team of 30-50 people break the course down into detailed positions and contours, basically programming the path and speed for the robot for every inch of the race. So Stanford's approach seems more general and thus more powerful.

The Mother Lode

Yesterday I posted a link to a really cool optical illusion.
Well, this web page is the mother lode of optical illusions (or visual illusions, as the author points out):

Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena

Amazing illusion

This illusion just boggles the mind: http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

Houston, we have power

Wow, way back in September we blew what I thought was a fuse while using the concrete saw to cut pavers. The circuit included the two outside outlets, and both of the bathroom outlets. None of the outlets had the little 'reset' switch, and none of the breakers in the electrical panel had been tripped.

I searched high and low, but found no outlet with one of those little reset buttons. I tried replacing each and every one of the breakers in the panel in case I'd actually fried one of them w/out causing it to trip. No luck.

Months pass. We didn't have our outdoor Christmas lights on this year (no power), and couldn't use the pretty outdoor lights Mary had hung up on our back porch. Mary couldn't use her hair dryer, and I couldn't recharge my electric toothbrush. Not a life changing issue, but a definite annoyance that we reminded ourselves of almost daily.

Well, today we were cleaning out the garage. Mary noticed an electrical outlet in the garage that I'd obviously missed. She pressed "reset" and we were back in business.

I swear I never saw it. It must have been covered by our skis leaning on the wall, or tools, or something. I'm sure she would have found it in 2 minutes if she'd looked after I did way back in September.

The stupidest thing is, the outlet can't be more than 3 feet from the electric panel.

Even more unbelievable

This column details how President Bush has officially stated 82 times that Congress has now power over him.

The science thing makes me pity Bush and worry for our children. This, on the other hand, simply stuns me. This above all else make me want him to be impeached. I can't believe that people who supposedly want to uphold the Constitution actually stand behind this bozo.

Unbelievable

This whole country is going anti-science. We're pretty much dooming ourselves to being a has-been in the world if we don't have the knowledge required to stay on top of scientific research (among other things).

We're supposed to leave the world a better place for our children. Instead, we're wrecking it, and we're keeping them ignorant so they won't know it.

This is an interesting story about what kids are (not) being taught in Arkansas.

I'm a wanted man

I just got a call from one of the guys I played basketball with last season at Timberhill. He's forming a team and he wanted me to join. woo-hoo. If I placed the voice correctly, he was the nice point guard who seemed to be overshadowed by the other point guard on the team. Whatever happens, I'll know at least one person on the team.

Also, it's going to be a B-4 league team, which means I'll be playing at the same level. When I signed up as an individual, I opted for B3-B4, so I'll have to wait at least a season to find out what the better league play is like.

Tuning helps

So, I've been a little out of practice with my hammered dulcimer. Part of the issue was that it was starting to get out of tune - to the point where even I could tell.

I was waiting for a local shop to get the electronic tuner I ordered. I wanted to go through a local shop b/c I like to support the local guys. This shop was very friendly, eager even, to put in the order. Well, I got tired of waiting. I called them, and even stopped by in person. The response was always, "it'll be in next week."

After a month and a half, I figured they'd had their chance. So I found one of the cheaper online shops (with a good reputation), and ordered it from there. Even after shipping it was about 20% less than what I would have gotten it for from the shop.

I fiddled with it, and spent about an hour tuning the dulcimer. No one note was off by very much (well, maybe one was), but pretty much every string needed to be tuned - they were all a little flat.

Wow, what a difference that made. Even with my limited skill, I could totally hear the difference in how the instrument sounded. The songs were brighter and more musical.

Now I just need to learn some more songs.

Organic versus Local

Slate has an interesting article highlighting how the store "Whole Foods" has been misleading its customers by emphasizing the "local" aspect of food, when in fact, most of its food comes from far away (but is organic).

A couple of things come to mind. While Whole Foods may be misleading people about the locality of the origins of their produce, organic is better than non-organic (all else being equal). It's entirely unreasonable to expect a nation-wide chain (they're even in the U.K.) with 181 stores to buy food locally. People want to buy tomatos year-round, and it's just not possible to grow them "locally" year-round, especially for such a large company.

So, if you really care about this, go to a smaller, local, shop that actually can provide you with organic and/or locally grown food. Our co-op provides us with that information for all produce. Find a co-op near you.

New Bed

Mary and I bought a bed frame over the weekend. We'd purchased a new queen-sized mattress a few years ago, but hadn't ever found a bedframe we could both agree on.

Well, we found one at The Joinery in SE Portland. Mary likes to read in bed - and prefers to sit upright while doing so (I probably prefer reading lying down), so we'd looked at their Lorelei bed on-line because the headboard has a curve that makes sitting against it comfortable. But, the picture on the web page is pretty boring - it has a minimal footboard - so we'd discounted it from our search.

However, the quest for a chair for Mary lead us to The Joinery to check out their rocking chairs, and we looked at the beds as well. In one of the rooms they had a "special order" bedframe that a customer must have decided against after ordering it. It was a Lorelei frame - with the "Deluxe" footboard, and it was made with Madrone wood. It also had some modifications from the standard Lorelei - with some non-uniform spacings between the vertical rails and panels.

Needless to say, Mary and I both thought this was a very unique and interesting bed. So we hemmed and hawed, and decided that we're just going to continue our collection of interesting furniture, and this piece must be in it.

Here are some pictures taken with my new phone. Note the exquisite photo quality.


The first is the bed, fully assembled, in our bedroom - including Jupiter.

These next two images are what we saw in the shop. You can get a good feel for the look of the headboard and footboard that you can't in the fully assembled bed. That's part of what threw us off in the first place - on the web the picture had so many pillows in front of the headboard that you were unable to get a sense of the look.

We also did really like the look of the Madrona's colors and grain. The side rails are also reddish and very unique.

This shows a nice (blurry) close-up of the grain.

The Joinery makes beautiful furniture. All of their pieces are sanded so smooth that you just walk around the shop touching everything you pass. They make all the furniture in the shop itself - you can even watch. And, their wood comes from The Collins Companies, a company which practices sustainable foresting techniques that have left their forests containing as much wood as when they first started logging.

Funny Guy

A couple of different sources have pointed me to Ze's page. He's got a bunch of amusing videos, and has been doing a blog for some amount of time (so I don't know how long he'll keep updating), but he appears to be doing daily videos rounding up the news. I found today's pretty funny.

Enjoy

Great visualization of our tax dollars

This page has a great graphic visualization of where our federal tax dollars go. I wish I could dial this up for each state as well.

Quote of the day

From Bill Maher's New Rules. It might take you a second read to get it...

New Rule: Stop saying "Brokeback Mountain" lost Best Picture because of a homosexual backlash. The only homosexual backlash in Hollywood involves an actual homosexual literally hitting you on the back with a lash. Besides, if "Brokeback Mountain" taught us anything, it's that there's nothing wrong with coming in number-two.

What's up with Iraq?

So many things about the current administration piss me off. But the war in Iraq has just gotten to the point of stupidity.

Bush and Rumsfeld are both saying that they're not near a civil war - but the US ambassador to Iraq and many other people directly involved with Iraq say it's either started or very close. The death rate to our troops has only risen since we started the war. And we just launched the largest air strike in the war!!!

When we took over the friggin country we didn't need as much air-power as we do right now.

That's not even talking about all the money that's gone missing that was targeted to help fix things in Iraq. The death squads and mass graves are just disgusting. People are still without power and clean water.

Let's just hope Bush doesn't decide to invade Iran as well.

March Madness

It has begun. I don't always get to watch many of the games, but I caught some of them today (the first day of it all). As usual, the games were generally close - providing some good, close games. Mary even got into the games a little bit.

Luckily Gonzaga made it through the first round. For whatever reason, I seem to resonate with them. I pull for the Pac-10 teams, but Gonzaga is just a nice underdog (not that they're underdogs any longer). Oh, and I like Duke because of coach K.

Anyway, I'm hoping to catch more of the games this year than last, because it's about the only sports they show on normal TV that I enjoy watching.

Work Update

This year at work started off like the past few. Lots of last-minute issues and a release expected by the customers to solve all their problems. And, true to nature, we delivered the release late, and missing a critical feature that just sent the customers through the roof.

But things began to change. The department decided to reorganize for a variety of reasons. My manager swapped places with another guy, and one of my colleagues moved up to co-manage the group. The change promised to lead to good things. The whole team got all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, those of us who could look forward to new and better things (some were still tied to fixing the horror that was our late release).

And things are a little better (though I think our new managers are getting hammered by the customers (hi boss!)), but the department just has a crazy build/release process that really doesn't match the customers' needs (nor ours). So we're thrashing with things that we don't need to be dealing with.

Luckily, I've got some newer things to work on which actually gives me a chance to do something that is interesting for the first time in as long as I can remember. The tough part is actually remembering what it is to do real work.

One bonus of the new managers was that I was able to go to a conference for the first time. It was a two day class of sorts, talking about the history and future of the C++ language. What was nice was the reflection on why the language is the way it is. I've often griped about the language - the hoops you have to jump through to get basic "features" that have been in languages since computer languages were first designed (in the 60's). But Stroustrup spoke well and said something that made the lightbulb in my head turn on. I'll still bitch about the language, but I understand now. One thing that did hit a cord was the phrase, "there are languages that are idealistic, and there are language people actually use."

The other speaker was much more dynamic - kind of a cross between a motivational speaker, a professor, and Carrot Top. His big revelation was that we're all going to be writing software for multi-processor platforms. It's the first time since computers were invented that pretty much everyone will not be using Von Neumann machines. And the main problem is that nobody has languages that really help with that (that is, languages that are actually used by people).

Not that I needed more ideas to work on at work, but I got all excited about writing error safe C++.

Anyway, work is looking up, it's no longer like it was before.

First Season

Well, my first season of basketball at Timberhill just finished up. We went 5 and 3, and then won our first two games in the playoffs. We lost in the semi-final game because we couldn't shut down the other teams two stars (who scored 25 and 27 points respectively). So we were 3rd/4th best in the league of 12 teams. Not too bad considering we were just the left-overs who didn't have teams of our own.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the first season went, considering that I haven't played a real game of basketball in at least three or four years. Officially I averaged 9.6 points per game, and had a total of 63 rebounds. The 63 rebounds was enough to give me the third most in the league - and that's with one of the games not recording rebounds. So I came close to averaging a double-double.

I'll sign up for the next season and see if I can better that.

Stupid Press

It's been well documented that there was no (none, nada, zilch) evidence of terrorist support by Saddam since the very early 1990's (see the 9/11 commission report or Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, or the very detailed Wikipedia article debunking the "connection".

Yet, you still see stories, such as this one from Reuters continuing to allow the reader to think there is some truth to the lie.

No wonder our country is so screwed up, the press just doesn't respect the American public and leads us wherever they want to go.

Thoughts on Valentine's day

First off, I got Mary some organic cotton flannel sheets for V-day. I rock. They're super soft, really comfortable, and just what the doctor would have ordered had she a choice in the matter.

Second, what's the big deal with Cheney shooting his lawyer friend? Not that it's a good thing it happened, but why's the media all up in arms about the delay in releasing the information? The media seems happy to sit on the sidelines and not pester the White House about the important things like: growing deficit, lack of funding for poor people in all capacities, cuts to social programs, tax breaks for the rich, science in our schools, education in general, the Plame leak case, corruption in the White House, no changes before or since Katrina, croneyism, growing terrorism, global warming, electronic voting, armor for troops, where'd the money go in Iraq, etc. etc. etc. Not that I've had much respect for the U.S. media in general, but to get their panties in a bunch over the shooting accident? Now that's reporting.

The company godaddy.com got a lot of flack about their Superbowl commercial last year (didn't see it), and had trouble getting their commercial approved this year (check out the link). I took a look at some of the commercials. Sure, they're very suggestive. But if you're talking about standards, two other commercials come to mind to be more risque - but were aired on TV. The first is Paris Hilton's Jack in the Box commercial where she washes a Bentley in a thong bikini. It ran a long time before the SuperBowl, but it was aired. And Jessica Simpson's "these bots were made for popping" Pizza Hut commercial had her pretty much seducing a 15-year-old boy. That seems way more inappropriate than a busty woman standing in front of an old-man judge. Whether or not you like the commercials or think they're appropriate, it appears as though the bar is set at different heights for different companies.

Vacuous coverage of the Olympics. I've been happier with the coverage than I expected. But more often than not, you get stupid comments. The announcers often just repeat the same information over and over. For instance, in the downhill, they talked a lot about the choice of skis by the U.S. downhillers - and how they were making last second decisions about switching skis. Good - but then they got into a loop, "i can't believe they're switching. they're switching skis. this is unprecendented. they're switching skis. i'd never do that. they're switching skis." How useless is that info? Try telling us what would be different about the skis, why would one be better than the other? What's the normal process these guys use? etc.

Another example was Apolo's fall in the short-track skating. It was plainly obvious on replay that Apolo's hand hit the skate of the guy in front of him. Yet, the day after, I heard an announcer say that Apolo was bumped. Huh? They showed the replay a dozen times from 3 different angles, he was not bumped.

And just for a Corvallis weather update. It was snowing two hours ago, and now we have sunny blue skies. Very odd.

Winter Olympics (day 2)

So we're watching the Olympics tonight - it's a stellar night: men's downhill, short-track skating, ski jump, luge, half-pipe, and no figure skating (well, other than Michelle Kwan's decision to not continue).

I'm pretty excited about the coverage now. There haven't been that many commercials, and they've kept from running too many "human interest" stories - it's been pretty much nothing but non-stop action.

I really like the short-track skating. The news of the evening (for the U.S.) was that Apolo Ohno didn't make it to the finals for the 1500m. The racers are traveling so fast, and lead changes happen so quickly, it is very exciting. Plus, they're just leaning over so far in the corners, and skating so close to each other. It's just mind-boggling what they're doing.

The downhill was awesome. The course's first two turns were on such steep terrain - one of them was perpendicular to the fall line. Then they're launched over a jump with a super-steep landing - just incredible. Three of the guys who came over that jump looked completely out of control - I imagine what I look like when I go over the little 2 foot jumps (completely out of control). Luckily, all the guys made it - no wrecks (which was amazing). The guy who won finished over .7 seconds ahead of the next guy, and over a second ahead of everyone else. Just phenomenal skiing.

The half-pipe is fun. The flying tomato is just kicking butt - and it's amazing that he's a two-sport athlete (skate board too). The couple of crashes were pretty impressive - one guy pretty much landed a 20 foot jump by landing on his hip on the top of the pipe - ouch. Oh, and some of the guys are sagging while they are competing.

Ski jump is ok - what I don't understand is why they have a style portion to the score. I figure you should be judged soley on distance, with a disqualification when you don't land it and come to a stop under control. Next to the downhill, I figure standing at the top of a ski jump has to take the biggest cojones.

And who wouldn't want to do the luge. It's just like the sledding you always pretended you were doing as you slid down a hill when you were 8 years old.

High Score

Woo-hoo.

We lost the game tonight - by one point. That was pretty frustrating. We just stopped taking care of the ball, making bad passes. We also stopped passing around and only played a perimeter game (which was not our strong suit tonight).

But, the 'woo-hoo' isn't for losing the game, it's for me being the high scorer on our team. I've never been a leading scorer in an organized game. Go me - 7 of 14 for 14 points, and 10 rebounds.

Slap Your Grandma?

I was at the gym today, working out in front of the standard 3 TVs.

Fox News and ESPN were both showing commercials, and the middle TV grabbed my attention. It was CMT (country music television), but the only way I could tell was that a hill-billy looking guy wearing a cowboy hat was on it - everything else was straight out of a rap/hip-hop video. There were all sorts of impossibly shaped women wearing pants/skirts/flaps of cloth shorter than Jessica Simpson's "Daisy Dukes", shaking their rump, dancing around. The cowboy even had some bling-bling, two large "rings" on each hand - one said "Honky" and the other said "Tonk".

It was a "country" music video, for a song named "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" - I kid you not.

Sure, the eye-candy was nice, but the lyrics were absolutely ridiculous. "Got it goin' on like Donkey Kong" and "Shut my mouth, slap your grandma". Slap your grandma?

Is Trace Adkins really that dumb? Or is he pure genius?

Cell Phone Shopping

We're changing cellular plans from Verizon to Cingular - mainly because Cingular offers reception inside the buildings at work, whereas Verizon phones get none. One of the bonuses is that we get a nice discount on both the phones and calling plans.

What really annoys me is the lack of good information about the phones. You go to the various web pages for cellphones, and they don't tell you anything useful. There is the standard "talk hours, standby hours, camera or no" and that's about it. Heck, I knew that about my phone when I got the low end phone over two years ago - I'd hoped they'd come up with more info.

For instance, my old phone has a calendar. There's no real way to synchronize it with any other calendar, but I could have hunted and pecked the events in if I'd wanted. Two years pass, and I expect perhaps a little advance in the capability. I know for a fact that a friend of mine at work has a phone that can sync up with Outlook - he has a simple phone that's two years old.

So I look on the web, and it's nearly impossible to find any information about cell phones and calendars. What the heck?

So I go to 2 different Cingular shops and ask. The sales guy at the first shop had one of those blue-tooth dongles in his ear the entire time I was talking to him. I didn't like him much to begin with, but the fact he kept that dongle in his ear the entire time he talked to me came off as very rude. I told him about the 2 year old phone that a friend had, and he just didn't really get the fact that I wanted to have a simple calendar on my phone that actually worked. He showed me all the various phones - but provided no information to distinguish any of them other than bluetooth, whether I could use it all around the world (yeah, that's what I'm needing, being the international traveler), and the different colors of phones.

The next store had a young woman that immediately looked very confused when I asked about a calendar. She pawned me off on the main guy at the store who had very little additional information. He didn't know about the capabilities of any of the basic phones any better than the dork with dongle in his ear. So he showed me the "smart" phones and Treo/Blackberry devices. There were a couple of different smart-like phones (some had MS Windows and some didn't), but, again, he had no information that would help someone choose between the phones.

Nowhere could I find any sources of information about the software that came with various phones, nor any realistic comparisons between them (calendaring or regular use). The couple of reviews I found that had something that seemed like information came from people who seemed to jump between 2 or 3 phones constantly, upgrading to a new set of phones every 4 or 6 months. Do they like throwing away money that much?

In the end, I'm getting a Nokia 6102 because my friend's phone that syncs with Outlook is a Nokia - and the 6102 looks like it might fit the bill. If that doesn't work, I'll be upgrading to the Cingular smart phone because it's pretty and is guaranteed to connect with MS products.

Anyway, it's been very frustrating to work so hard for so little relevant information. Our cell phone numbers will remain the same, but we'll have new phones in less than a week.

The next step is to switch the home phone to Vonage - which should be interesting considering the fact they don't offer phone numbers local to Corvallis (or any location south of Woodburn or west of Bend).

Scooter Libby

So Scooter is under investigation relating to the case where Plame's name was leaked to the press. I've no idea if he actually perjured himself or not (though this administration seems to have a very selective approach to applying morals).

I do, however, find Scooter's legal defense to be very suspicious. They're going to subpoena a bunch of the White House documents to "show" how overworked he was and how the perjury might be attributed Scooter being overloaded with too much stuff (and stuff more important than Valorie Plame). Well, the judge who is overseeing the case threw out another case when the defense wasn't allowed to get access to the documents deemed secret because of national security.

What do you think the odds are that the White House will withhold the documents he requests? The judge will have to throw out the case. Bush won't let his man hang out to dry, not while he was working to further the President's agenda.